


Rattle

by Strangeredlantern



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hospitals, Kid!Scott, Kid!Stiles, Sedation, morphine use, palliative care, vivid description of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strangeredlantern/pseuds/Strangeredlantern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stiles thinks that if you have to die, you should die with a bang. Police sirens, catastrophe surrounding you. Heroic, like in the comic books. Not like this, fading away like a candle with no more wax to burn. A city should have been saved in exchange for his mother’s life. She should die like a hero, not like this."</p>
<p>Taken from episode 3.12, when the Sheriff tells a bit about Claudia and from episode 3.18 where more is revealed about the circumstances of her death.</p>
<p>(Mind the tags!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rattle

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just my headcanon of what might have happened that night when Claudia Stilinski died. Looking back on this, its rather angst filled and over-sad, but I tried my best not to overstate things. 
> 
> For the purposes of my story here, Claudia suffered from symptoms associated with primary progressive non-fluent aphasia, one of the types of frontotemporal dementia, along with what seems to be canon in the show, behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. 
> 
> If you want to know more, you can visit [here](http://www.alz.org/dementia/fronto-temporal-dementia-ftd-symptoms.asp#symptoms).
> 
> Unbeta'd so if there are mistakes, please forgive me.

Stiles thinks that if you have to die, you should die with a bang. Police sirens, catastrophe surrounding you. Heroic, like in the comic books. Not like this, fading away like a candle with no more wax to burn. A city should have been saved in exchange for his mother’s life. She should die like a hero, not like this.

Stiles may only be nine, but that doesn’t mean the internet is broken or something. His dad can try and hide as much as he wants. It doesn’t stop Stiles from writing the words down on his palms, looking them up on the computer when his dad is sitting in front of the muted TV, the amber drink that Stiles can’t touch in one of the carved out glasses in his father’s hand. Palliative care. That was the word of the day, Mrs. McCall suggesting it once again in gentle tones to his father. 

“Sheriff, she just can’t- I know she’s fighting, we all know, but in the end, isn’t it better like this?”

xxxxxxxxxx

Things start to change in the hospital room. His mom has been pretty much silent for the whole month of December, but now the IV bags hanging to the right have been replaced with just one small one. Morphine. Stiles knows that one kind of. Its like super-tylenol. 

Stiles sits in the same plastic green chair he always has, right next to his mom. He looks up from his fractions homework to ask one of the nurses looking over his mom if she’s in a lot of pain.

“No honey.” She taps the clear plastic bag with the back of her knuckles. “This makes it feel like nothing at all.”

It makes dying feel like nothing at all.

“Its getting slower.” Stiles states it half to the nurse, half to himself. He glances over at the heart monitor, the three lines in different colors over the black screen still displaying a steady beat. The nurse gives him a comforting look, one that says she knows that Stiles knows. She nods at him before checking the IV one more time, and leaving the room, the squeak of her white sneakers following her.

Stiles looks down at his pencil, poised over the same problem he’s been looking at for the past 20 minutes. It was really nice of Scott to pick up his homework, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to finish much of it anyways. 

“Hey mommy.” Stiles hasn’t called her mommy in such a long time. It was reserved for when daddy had already told him ‘no’. He dumps his work into his backpack by the door and drags the chair around so that he’s facing the side of the propped up hospital bed. He grabs at the hand laying there, the long fingers that used to be so full of life. Now all it does is sit there, clammy and hot because Stiles is clammy and hot. The rest of his mom’s arm is cold though, so he runs his other hand up and down slowly. There isn’t a whole lot you can say to someone who doesn’t answer back anymore.

Stiles has read all about dying. Not like, what happens to people after they die. How the body actually does it. The cold, slow, creep of it. 

“Daddy said that he was gonna be here, but Mrs. McCall…” Stiles looks down from his mother’s almost peaceful face, back to the hand that he’s forcing warmth into. “Mrs. McCall is my best friend’s mom, and she works here. You’re in the hospital. I’m your son, Stiles. I’m staying with you.” He’s said it so many times now it’s routine, and only in the last few days has he forgotten to remind her of everything. Dad told him that he didn’t need to anymore. He shakes the thought from his head and starts again, because its important that his mom hears this.

“Mrs. McCall said that daddy will be here. But he’s saving lives, someone trapped under a car. The ambulance is coming to the same hospital we’re in. He’s coming.”

Stiles loses track of how many times he promises his mom that his dad is going to be there, but the hand in his own two small ones remains as limp as ever, as easy to hold as a doll. 

xxxxxxxxxx

The jarring, panicked beep of the heart monitor shoves Stiles awake, his mom’s ring an indent in his cheek from falling asleep over her hand again. Everything tightens, and Stiles grabs his mother’s hand like its a lifeline, as if holding it tighter is going to keep her here. Mrs. McCall walks in slowly, and shouldn’t she be running? Shouldn’t people be panicking?

Stiles hones in on her casual walk around the edge of the bed, watches her fingers slide under the heart monitor, flip a switch, the blaring alarm cutting to silence. Stiles settles his gaze on the screen. 19 beats. In a minute.

“Stiles, honey.” Mrs. McCall looks like she’s going to say more, but the look on Stiles’ face must have stopped her. She moves back around the bed, and stands behind Stiles’ green chair, looking over him and on to his mother. He can distantly feel a hand on his shoulder, but really, its like everything has been covered in cotton. Stuffed in his ears, his mouth, around everything that isn’t his mom and his mom’s hand in his own.

When people die, their breath is supposed to rattle, like breathing in after a bad cough. But not his mom. When people die, they’re supposed to relax and slump. But not his mom.

Any beep on the monitor could be the last one, they’re so far apart, and all Stiles wants if for his mom to let go. Her face has slowly gotten longer and longer, her eyes drooping open, her jaw hanging, as if in a slow, sleepy scream. Without any warning at all her wilted eyes twitch to her hand, and her hand makes an effort in return. Stiles is so shocked he looks down to his cradled treasure, holds it even tighter than before, his fingers slipping with all the sweat, because his mom must recognize him now, his mom has something to say. Mrs. McCall must be in here somewhere because the heart monitor shuts off right at the beginning of the code red sound.

The sound that means someone’s heart has stopped.

There’s another hand on his shoulder, pulling him back, pulling him away from the warmth he left for his mom as Mrs. McCall bends over his mom’s body, pushing a button on the side of the bed, laying her down. Now his mom really looks dead.

Stiles thinks he must be screaming, because he feels like someone is running nails through his heart and throat, and he can’t breathe, and the floor suddenly swims up to him. Fingers dig into his shoulder as a nurse follows him in descent. The view from the floor is weird, but he can faintly hear what’s going on as Mrs. McCall slides her hands over his mom’s face, keeps them there.

“Melissa, the kid, is he seizing?”

“No, panic attack. I’m his next of kin since his father isn’t here. Sedate him.” He manages to jerk towards Mrs. McCall’s voice, and in his own distorted vision he can see the tears running down her face, her arms still over his mom. Its the last thing he sees before there’s a dull jab in his arm, and everything fades to black.

xxxxxxxxxx

When Stiles wakes up, he insists that he can’t be in a hospital bed for his dad to find him, he just _can’t_. The young nurse in there with him is already feeling soft after reading his chart, and she shuffles him out of the patient room, down the long halls. They come to rest in the emergency waiting room, and she sits down next to him. She’s so small she could be Stiles’ older sister and she reaches around to cradle his head, just exactly like his mom used to. He’s gone again before he has the chance to even say thanks.

Suddenly he’s awake again, propped up on his backpack instead of the nurse. He looks around to find his dad bent over the check-in, signing papers with Mrs. McCall on the other side. His dad who looks exhausted, frozen, and almost as dead as his mom is now.

xxxxxxxxxx

 

“You can see thestrals now.” Scott mumbles to Stiles as they sit next to the window at the funeral reception. They haven’t really been able to look each other in the eyes, but its the first thing that’s made Stiles smile in forever. He grabs on to the arm of Scott’s suit and pulls him close, looking up at him with half smile that’s full of tears. “Yeah. Yeah I can.” He jabs his finger into the glass window pane and heaves Scott towards it so they can both see. “They’re everywhere, dude.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope I haven't offended anyone too badly. Thank you for reading!


End file.
